When Lu had taken his first step off solid ground and immediately sunk hip-deep into the mud, he had nearly cried. Now, he felt nothing. It wasn’t that he was inured to it; the clinging slimy wetness was still the most disgusting sensation he had ever felt, the hot stench of rot too offensive to ever ignore or forget. He was simply too tired.
Hours, he had been wading through thick mud. His shoes must have disappeared almost instantly, sucked off his feet between one movement and the next, lost forever. But Lu hadn’t realized right away, the feel of swamp inside a shoe identical to swamp outside. It was only when a lancing pain had gone up through his right leg that Lu was made aware of his bare-footedness; a long spiky root-looking thing, like a burr-skinned yam, had imbedded its spines into his sole.
He was still carrying the Hell-yam, actually. Spines or no spines, it was the only remotely edible thing he had found since he entered the swamp. He hadn’t seen a single animal, though he had been startled several times by shifting ripples in the mud near him, evidence that something was alive in there.
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Those brief moments of movement quickly became the only stimulation that he received between long stretches of monotonous trudging. Lu couldn’t say how long he had been moving, but the cloud-covered sky had changed colour several times, lightening to a pink, then deepening to a dark ominous red, before returning to the original swirling purple. Lu didn’t know if the changes marked some sort of day/night cycle or if they were just changes in weather. If the colours cycling did indeed mean a full day had passed, than Lu had arrived here a bit over three days ago. He didn’t dare to sleep; even if some terrible swamp monster didn’t devour him, marinating his chest wounds in swamp water would almost certainly lead to infection. As a cultivator such a thing wouldn’t have troubled me; no disease could possibly survive a third realm immune system. But as a mortal I’m incredibly vulnerable. I have to maintain constant vigilance!
Indeed, returning to mortality was incredibly inconvenient, even disregarding his lack of spells and physical resilience. Lu had – originally tied to his hip, but now around his neck to avoid the water – an enchanted purse. A small, leather purse, which was much larger on the inside than the outside. It was an item of not only great utility, but also great sentiment, as he had enchanted it himself from scratch. Inside that purse were a great many items that would have been useful; travelling clothes, a tent and bedroll, even some medical supplies.
But he couldn’t access any of it, because the purse was spelled to only work if provided qi identical to the qi that had created it. A lock, to prevent anyone from using it other than himself, with his personal spiritual signature as the key. A lock he couldn’t open without a dantian.
Lu wanted to sulk, to feel sorry for himself, but the mental effort it would take would be simply too exhausting. There was only enough strength in his body to move, to drag one leg forward through the thick muck, plant it, then repeat the process with the other leg. The clouds were beginning to turn pink again.
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Lu ate the Hell-yam raw. The burrs were spaced out enough that he could grip one in his teeth without impaling his lips, then tear off the burr together with a section of the thin outer skin and spit it out. Eventually the yam was entirely skinless, and he could fill his belly. Lu wouldn’t say the yam tasted particularly good or bad; he hadn’t eaten anything at all in so long, he couldn’t recall if he had ever tasted something similar or not. The flesh was tough and gritty, and quite bland. Perhaps slightly bitter? Lu dimly recalled some long-ago herbalist lecture, about how to identify poisons by taste, but put it out of his mind. He was beyond ravenous at this point; if it was poison, he’d still prefer it to starvation.
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The clouds were purple again. They were by a wide margin the most interesting thing to look at, so Lu spent long stretches of time with his head cranked upwards, not looking at all where he was going. He felt that if he could understand anything at all about where he was, it might be useful for getting back to the sect. Plus, he was bored. The clouds didn’t seem to ever thin or break up, keeping a constant distance from the ground. He hadn’t been rained on, or seen any kind of change on the horizon other than the colour of the clouds. The ‘lightning’ didn’t behave anything like real lightning; it would appear, dart across a section of cloud – sometimes splitting into multiple tines – before disappearing again. It never arced towards the ground, never produced thunder, but once he had seen two tines collide with each other while going opposite directions. They had merged into a shining yellow ball that had glowed brightly for multiple minutes before fading. A spell could shape lightning into a ball and hold it in place, but this is covering the entire sky. Could the clouds be artificial, a single gigantic spell? Or is that just how lightning works in this place?
There were other things that Lu found unsettling. Where were all the plants and insects? A swamp like this, filled with obviously rotting material, should have been teeming with life. Yet, he had encountered almost nothing; just the Hell-yam and some theoretically alive things fleeing at his approach. There wasn’t even any algae or pond scum that he could see, any worms or crawling things in the mud. It was too barren.
Lu continued to wade forward, increasingly unsettled. Was there even anything to find, an end to the swamp? Maybe it stretched on forever. No, no, don’t lose hope! There has to be something, anything…
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Lu was basically catatonic. Time had passed, the clouds cycling again and again. He had walked onto a miraculously dry piece of land, and collapsed like a corpse and slept. But the dry bit of land was as barren as anything else, so he had moved on in search of food. But there was nothing, just endless watery nothing for days and days. Lu hydrated himself from the groundwater, though it tasted terrible. The hunger gnawed at his mind, a painful sucking emptiness in his middle, and Lu ate strips of fabric from his robes just to try and quiet it. He swallowed mud. He even tried to eat his purse, but the enchanted leather was too tough to chew.
He was going mad, and he was just lucid enough to welcome it. Maybe I died, lying on the training grounds. Maybe this really is Hell.
Once, he managed to catch one of the squirming things in the mud. It had moved right in front of him, and he had lunged on instinct. The creature was a bit like a leech, a ribbon of soft muscle with a toothless orifice, the length of a hand. Lu stuck it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. It didn’t taste like anything.
His wounds had scabbed over completely, small red flecks against the white of his chest. He could see his ribs when he looked down.
It was two weeks into his journey, when something changed.
Lu hadn’t noticed it right away; it had snuck up in front of him, so gradually he didn’t pay it any mind. Then a particularly bright spark had drawn his eye, and he looked up. Then he looked down, and noticed.
There was something on the horizon, a lumpy shape where everything else was flat. Lu frantically moved toward it. Anything, anything as all. A rock, a tree, a demon, I don’t care. Anything but more swamp.
The shape gained more detail as it grew closer. It was a dark brown colour, and taller than it was wide. Slightly thicker at the base. Lu continued to move, dragging himself through the mud faster than he ever had. Are those… Wood planks! Wood! This is a building!
Civilization!
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Bo had seen it hours ago, the little creature moving towards him. Through his looking-glass, he had watched it make its way slowly through the swamp. It had two arms and two legs and a head, like a man, but the proportions were wrong. Like a newborn had been stretched out until it was as tall as an adult, without any muscle or fat anywhere on its body. It had hair on its head, but not its face or body that he could see. The neck was thin and long, and the head ballooned forward, the face too round and jutting. It had no idea how to move through the swamp properly, and was bearing obvious wounds.
It looked harmless, but Bo was wary. Patrols were disappearing lately. Great Swamp Mother thought it was the Junk Dog Clan, and the Junk Dog Clan did weird bullshit. Was this one of their specialty warriors? Bo had never seen a psychic, but they were known to look strange. Was this a lone survivor, come to gloriously perish in the heat of battle?
The creature was moving more quickly, it must have seen his observation tower. Bo ground his teeth in thought. If it was Junk Dog, the best thing to do was to shoot it, before it could come close and wreck the tower. But if it wasn’t, just some weird mutant, then it might have seen something about the missing patrols.
Bo decided he would take a risk, and try to capture it. He dropped off the back of the tower, and started digging.